By Erik Skye

21 Jul 2011

Mots du jour:  vous (you), veux (want), pourquoi (why)

I took the TGV (speed train) back to Paris this morning.

They think it’s called “The Magic Bus”; the bus from the movie “Into the Wild”. That’s what Yacine and his friends call it. They think it’s incredible that I’ve been there (back in Alaska) and dream of their own pilgrimage someday. I agreed to show Momo the Magic Bus in exchange for him showing me the Sahara Desert, to which we eagerly shook hands.

Momo’s visiting from Morocco. Salah has French and Moroccan passports. Yacine has French and Algerian passports. The four of us went for a late-night tour of Paris, which included an area called “Pigalle” (i.e. “The Sin District”). They bounced between Algerian, French, and English throughout the night.

The main event was smoking what they called a “chicha” and drinking heavily-minted tea in a dimly-lit, red parlor. The chicha looked like a hookah to me, and we tried double apple and raisin. Apparently, it’s just for taste. I specifically asked: “will I be able to pass a drug test after this”, to which I got a positive response.

Momo hand-wrote my name in Arabic (in my little black book – see, people love my little black book). The characters look like squiggles, and he wrote them starting right to left.

Much of what I noticed in The Sin District and on the late-night drive through Paris is not bloggable; at least not in my blog. Otherwise, today’s article could have been much longer. We saw the underbelly of this place.

Previously, Yacine picked me up at the train station, cooked me lunch in his apartment, escorted me on a tour through the landmarks of Paris (i.e. Eiffel Tower, La Seine River), and joined me for a traditional Algerian dinner with couscous. 

To receive e-mail notification of future blog articles, send e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with “Subscribe” in subject line.